Posts Tagged chemistry

Last Ace of Diamonds, I stalled for a week by posting a video of a poem I’d written previously. I’m not sure if I’ll have the real Ace of Diamonds done in time, so I’ll do the same again. The real Ace of Diamonds, which I will publish as soon as it’s ready, is a a sequel/prequel to the last real Ace of Diamonds, and it’s also about stalling and procrastination, which seems appropriate. This is me reading my poem Chemistry (which was the two of diamonds, and already has a video) at the open mic night on JoCo Cruise Crazy 2:

And here’s a more close-up video of it that Jason recorded:

I sure am stalling a lot this round. It’s embarrassing considering I started with something I really like that was done in time. But hey, I still have an hour till the deadline, so maybe I’ll get the real Ace of Diamonds done in time anyway. If you’re wondering why I’m onto diamonds now when I went from Spades to Hearts last time, it was simply the next card in the first deck I looked at.

In other news, here are some things that music lovers in Europe might want to do:

Go see The Burning Hell if they come near while attempting to break a record by giving concerts in ten countries in 24 hours. If you want to know what they’re like, you could watch the videos I’m currently uploading of them at Viertel (my favourite concert venue on land) where they will return for the world record tour.

Keep an eye on Jonathan Coulton’s tour schedule, because he’ll be at Union Chapel (my second favourite concert venue on land) in London on September 20, and will no doubt visit other places in the UK and Europe. If you don’t know what he sounds like yet, you haven’t been paying attention; pick a video from my YouTube channel at random and he’s probably in it.

Just in time to arrive late for Valentine’s Day, Červená Barva Press have released a chapbook of poems mentioning the word ‘heart’, which were posted on Fictionaut in response to a Valentine’s Day challenge. I’m going to assume they removed the customary apostrophe and ensuing S in order to avoid any unintentional SQL injection. Anyhow, this book includes my scientific love poem, Chemistry, which you can see me reading while wearing two fake moustaches here:

The words and explanations of the science behind it can be found on a few previous blog posts, so I’ll just link to one of them.

Feel free to buy a copy of the chapbook for yourself or your valentine. I don’t get any money from it, and neither does anyone else except for the publisher, because apparently we did it for love, but if you buy it, you’ll get to read quite a varied set of poems, which will make you happy. Alternatively, you could read the poems on Fictionaut by searching the site for ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’.

On the subject of fake moustaches, I recently went on a cruise with Jonathan Coulton and many of his famous friends and fans. The cruise featured a moustache formal, so if you would like to see how my moustache has changed over time, here’s a picture of me at the formal. I’ll probably post more about the cruise later, if I can come up with a sufficiently creative way of describing it. In the mean time, you could enjoy the many videos I took of the cruise.

Well, my last six months are over, without the rules really having been adhered to, and I’m still alive. On the subject of Still Alive, Steam is now available on the Mac so I finally played all the way through Portal on the very Mac that sang Still Alive for my last video (the older Mac only lip-synched, although it was perfectly capable of singing.) And on the subject of my last video, that wasn’t my last video after all, because here’s a new one. It’s a ‘performance‘ of the scientific love poem Chemistry, which I wrote during Writing Cards and Letters and revised for a challenge on Fictionaut.

It’s one of those things that was meant to be simple but resulted in my buying lipstick, cotton swabs, a T-shirt, nerd specs and two fake moustaches, and breaking a wine glass which I never used anyway. I bought the moustaches in New Zealand because I couldn’t find any here. While I was there I recorded another video, which is not quite finished yet, so watch this space.

To save you a click, here are the words and study guide, mostly cut and pasted from other posts but with some irrelevant bits taken out and other bits added:

The following is a French translation of Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements“, to be sung to the tune of “Je ne suis pas bien portant” by Gaston Ouvrard. Sorry, no recording yet, I can neither sing nor pronounce French well enough. You’re welcome to try.